I Still Love Him

At that moment, the battle in the sky had already erupted.

On one side stood the Empress of Great Xia, high above all others and invincible across Xuanzhou.

On the other stood the Sword Sovereign, who could suppress the sun and moon and sweep across the Three Thousand Dao Provinces.

Both were figures who stood at the very summit of the cultivation world. This battle was destined to be a clash between dragons and tigers.

The Empress struck first. Her Temporal Dao Body erupted, and her opening move was a temporal art powerful enough to freeze all things.

Faced with the golden tide of temporal ripples capable of causing all living beings to decay, Ye Jiuhuang’s expression remained as indifferent as an eternal ice sculpture.

She did not draw her sword. Instead, she held two fingers together like a blade and gently swept them across the oncoming golden torrent.

“Sever Karma.”

A pale sword light, almost transparent, blossomed soundlessly.

There was no earth-shaking roar, nor any dazzling display of light.

That sword light was like a sliver of dawn piercing the darkness. With effortless ease, it cleaved apart the heavy temporal ripples. The void, which had been rapidly aging, strangely returned to stillness the instant it touched the sword light.

“This… this is impossible!”

Wu Lingxiao’s pupils contracted violently. She shrieked, “My law of time stands above all other laws! How could you possibly—”

“Shatter the Firmament.”

Ye Jiuhuang paid no attention to her howling. Her second finger had already swept outward.

This sword was overbearing to the extreme!

A colossal sword aura stretching thousands of zhang crashed down, as though divine punishment had descended from the heavens.

Wu Lingxiao hurriedly gathered all her temporal power in an attempt to resist. Yet the instant the sword shadow touched her, she heard the sound of every bone in her body cracking.

“Crack!”

The Empress of Great Xia let out a cry of agony. Her black-gold imperial armor shattered inch by inch, and her entire body was sent plummeting from the sky like a kite with its string cut, crashing heavily into the ruins of the Great Xia Imperial Palace and stirring up a cloud of dust a hundred zhang high.

Zi Yao, Xia Lengyue, and Ye Qingcheng were horrified.

They exchanged glances, and in this desperate situation, they unexpectedly developed a tacit sense of shared misery.

“Kill this woman! Only then will our husband belong to us!”

Zi Yao frantically shook the Soul-Devouring Bell. Its demonic music transformed into millions of razor-sharp blades. The ice coffin of Xia Lengyue cracked open, releasing a torrential rain of arrows formed from ten-thousand-year-old profound ice.

Ye Qingcheng merged her nine tails into one, while her pink law of charm and poison attempted to corrode Ye Jiuhuang’s mind.

“Trifling sparks.”

Ye Jiuhuang let out a cold snort. Her eyes closed slightly, and her domain descended in an instant.

At that moment, every speck of dust and every thread of wind within a hundred-mile radius of the imperial city transformed into a murderous sword.

Accompanied by three shrill screams, the three grand demoness cultivators, once so imperious, were pierced through the heart by countless swords almost simultaneously.

Their treasures shattered, their spiritual power forcibly severed. One after another, they fell beside Wu Lingxiao, drenched in blood like birds with broken wings, as wretched as a pack of stray dogs.

It was an utter, overwhelming defeat.

They had not even managed to touch the hem of Ye Jiuhuang’s robe.

Just then, Wu Lingxiao suddenly climbed out of the crater amid the ruins.

Her face was covered in blood, and her eyes had become utterly deranged. A perverse delight even flickered within them.

“Ye Jiuhuang… so what if you defeated me? You’re nothing more than a pitiful wretch toyed with in that man’s palm!”

Wu Lingxiao suddenly spread open her arms. A mass of dark golden light blossomed between her brows, then transformed into a stream of light invisible to the naked eye and instantly shot into Ye Jiuhuang’s forehead.

This was the forbidden secret art of the Temporal Dao Body. It could reverse karma and dispel all contracts and forms of control.

“[Reverse the Ages—Let All Shackles Fall]!”

Wu Lingxiao spat blood as she laughed maniacally, her expression twisted with viciousness. “Ye Jiuhuang! I’ve already removed the [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest] from you! You’re free now! You’re no longer his puppet! Have you come to your senses?”

High above, Ye Jiuhuang’s figure swayed slightly.

Wu Lingxiao staggered to her feet and wiped the blood from her face before sneering at Ye Jiuhuang. “You probably still don’t know Ye Xuan’s true identity, do you? He isn’t some devoted and righteous man at all. He’s a great demon who has reincarnated through countless lifetimes and toyed with the feelings of countless women! The fate we’ve ended up in was all part of his schemes! He—”

Ye Jiuhuang slowly opened her eyes, her expression as indifferent as ever.

“Oh? Is that so?”

Her voice was calm—so calm that Wu Lingxiao’s laughter abruptly died.

“You’re talking about [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest]? I know about it.”

Ye Jiuhuang calmly looked down at the four women below, her tone carrying the disdain of a god looking down upon ants. “As for his identity as someone who has reincarnated through countless lifetimes, the betrayals he once endured, and the coldness he possesses now… I know all of it.”

“Then why would you…”

Wu Lingxiao froze, her eyes filled with disbelief. “If you knew all that, and the shackles have now been removed, why don’t you kill him and take your revenge? Someone of your stature—how could you willingly let a man like that use you?”

Ye Jiuhuang looked toward Ye Xuan, who was nearby, leisurely munching on melon seeds. The killing intent in her eyes transformed into humble, contented tenderness the instant their gazes met.

“Just now, in the instant you dispelled the secret art within me, I did indeed give it some thought.”

The corners of Ye Jiuhuang’s lips curved slightly. That single smile caused every flower in the imperial city to pale in comparison.

“I asked myself: If there were no such contract, no forced loyalty, would I still remain by his side?”

“The answer is perfectly clear. I still love him.”

“I love his gentleness, and I love his coldness. I love his devotion, and I love his vengeance. So long as he is the one in question, whether he is a god who saves all living beings or a demon who brings chaos to the ages, it makes no difference to me.”

“To me, [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest] is, at most, merely an embellishment added to satisfy my husband’s little desire for possessiveness.”

Ye Jiuhuang turned her head toward Wu Lingxiao, the pity in her eyes almost overflowing. “Women like you—women who have betrayed others, wavered in your resolve, and acted selfishly—naturally cannot understand what it means to love only one person for an entire lifetime, or what it means to remain unwaveringly faithful.”

Below, Ye Xuan brushed the crumbs from his hands and slowly rose to his feet.

He walked over to Ye Jiuhuang and habitually pulled the First Sword Emperor of the Heavens into his embrace. Then he turned to the four women whose faces had gone ashen and let out an extremely cruel sneer.

“Wu Lingxiao, you went to all that trouble to break her shackles just to see this?”

“I told you long ago. [One Conquest, Eternal Conquest] was created specifically to restrain trash women like you—women who cannot withstand temptation and cannot hold on to their principles.”

Ye Xuan lowered his head and kissed Ye Jiuhuang on her fair forehead, his eyes filled with utter contempt.

“For a woman like Jiuhuang, whose emotions are pure and whose very soul is engraved with the word ‘loyalty’… something like that is completely useless.”

Wu Lingxiao sat limply on the ground, staring at the perfect couple above her.

In that instant, she felt as though her soul had been forcibly torn from her body.

The method she had taken pride in, the trump card she had believed could turn defeat into victory—in the face of Ye Jiuhuang’s words, “I still love him,” all of it appeared so laughable, so insignificant, so… utterly worthless.